


i know you hate yourself / but you're nothing like him

by pansexualdisaster



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:00:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29010924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pansexualdisaster/pseuds/pansexualdisaster
Summary: this his how Bodhi Rook dies





	i know you hate yourself / but you're nothing like him

Bodhi Rook had believed himself past any kind of redemption, past any kind of being lovable. It had started when the first dead body, still warm, had fallen at his feet. He had not made the shot of course. He had never killed anyone directly. But after the first body at his feet, he had started wondering the number of deaths he had been partly responsible for. He would have regular panic attacks, or would dissociate when he would board a ship under his command. Nothing felt real anymore, and he slept less and less. He would eat less and less, and feel on the verge of vomiting at any given moment.  
It had been Galen Erso who had understood first, seeing the bag under his eyes growing darker and darker, and seeing his clothes getting seemingly baggier and baggier. He had told him, after having asked for his name that he knew what he was going through. That overwhelmed by the guilt, his body was shutting down, and he was letting himself die. Then he had told him that he was not past redemption. That no one ever was. That life was not a sum of your action, good and bad, that would make the scale go one way or another, and that he was more than what he had gotten roped into. 

He did not believe it at first.  
Because Bodhi had volunteered, after he had lost his brother. His brother had been his pride, his role model, and his brother had enlisted long before he had. His family had been so proud of having a warrior, a soldier of the Empire amongst them. So had Bodhi. Only, he had not quite realized what he was gotten into, that part was true.  
After weeks of thinking he could allow himself to think that maybe, just maybe, he could still do good, that he wasn’t just rotten to the core. And so he had gotten back to Galen Erso. 

“What can one do to get redemption ?”

And so Galen had entrusted him with a mission.  
And so Bodhi Rook had deserted, and he had been restrained, tortured. He had passed on his message, but his mission had not stopped here. After all, they needed a pilot, right ? Cassian Andor needed a pilot, and then Jyn Erso. And he was a pilot, a pilot looking for salvation, for redemption, for people who had known he had done good in the end. He needed other people to know that he hadn’t been a terrible person in the end. 

If he had lived longer, Bodhi Rook would have probably ended up realizing that to him, the Rebellion was almost the same as the Empire to him : whatever they believed in was still the total annihilation of the other side, and they still killed so many people to reach they’re goal, he could not have been part of that on the long term. Well, at least, the Rebellion did not have machines that would blow plantes up, and they were fighting against it. Maybe he would have stayed, in the end. 

But he had not lived long enough.  
He had lived long enough to be a hero, or at least, that had been the thought that he couldn’t stop from crossing his head when he had plugged the comlink into the master switch, or whatever were things - everything got blurry in the end, blame the adrenaline. He had contacted the Rebellion, they knew what to do, the plans would go through, the Death Star would be destroyed. He might have been partly responsible in thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of deaths, but how many had he been partly responsible in avoiding, uh ? Galen Erso was now dead, so he was allowed to think about his life as a sum of good and bad, and, he thought, he must have at least righted part of his wrong, right ? Rogue One would be heroes. He had done his part, now the rest of the Rebellion would have to do theirs, and Cassian and Jyn.  
When he stopped the communication with General Akbar’s ship, he took a deep breath in. For the first time in months, he breathed freely, the guilt trapping his thorax finally lifted. He had done everything he could. 

He only had one breath.  
One breath before the grenade was thrown in. 

All happened so fast, yet so slowly. In the four point twenty-eight seconds there was between the clank of the grenade against the ship and the moment it went off, he lived lifetimes. He thanked himself, for not giving up. He thanked Galen Erso, for the purpose he had found again. He prayed to his Saints that the others would be ok, that Chirruk and Bane, K-2SO and Cassian, and mostly Jyn would be ok. He had done right by her he thought, he had given her a chance to see her father was not a bad guy, but probably a hero above them all, he had given her the opportunity to see him again.  
He did not feel too proud. He felt good, complete. He could check that from a list, like you would check vegetables from a grocery shopping list. He felt at peace. 

He sent a prayer to his brother ; he hoped that in the end, he had gotten redemption too, even though no one had ever known, or would ever know. 

He then, all of a sudden, grew wary of the fact that if Amiral Akbar’s ship went down, he would not be remembered, and then, would his redemption truly count ? A part of him screamed that yes it would, while the other said that it wasn’t enough, that he needed posterity to remember he was one of the good guys, because he wasn’t secure enough with himself to truly believe he had done it. A more rational Bodhi would have scolded him : what do you need to be remembered any more than a pilot whose X-wing got shot down ? But being on the brink of death and being aware of it does that to you sometimes, you’re not completely rational. 

But when he sees the grenade, maybe two seconds after it hurt the floor, he knows it’s it, he knows he’s done.  
It doesn’t cross his head that that’s the sign he has not done it because of the end, because of the result, and that he has done it, everything since Galen gave him his mission, because he wanted to do what was right. It doesn’t go through his head that that is the sign, the very sign that he isn’t rotten, that he is good, or tried so hard to be. Because in the end, he is terrified. Not relieved, just, terrified.  
What does it feel like to die ? He has known dead people, he has known people who knew dead people. Hell, he had seen pretty fresh corpses, it was a war after all. He did not mind death, he minded the process, he minded dying. It seemed painful. After his full inspiration, expiration, he only gets one more shaky half-breath in. 

He was dying a hero, he was dying a martyr, he was dying an example for those who like him, were stuck in the Empire’s great, great machine. He hoped people would follow. He hoped the war would end.  
He had done it, a purpose to his life, a purpose to his death, a death that wouldn’t be useless, who could say as much as him ? People either had only a meaningful life, or more rarely, a meaningful death. Few were those who had both, right ? So why was he so terrified ? He had done it, after all. 

A smile across his face, he hoped for change, for peace, for quiet, for calm.  
A smile across his face, his inside torn by raw terror like he has never known it, he wonders, what does it feel like to die.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed it !  
> you can find me on twitter (@H4PPENED) !


End file.
